


Quam Prohibere Tempore

by bethagain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic, Sherlock Makes Deductions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 11:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2619668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh lord forgive me I wrote a kid fic.  John and Mary's son goes missing... Or does he?  And Sherlock, of course, saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quam Prohibere Tempore

The minute hand of the grandfather clock in the parlor was stuck. Well, not actually stuck, but click-click-clicking, trying to move a minute forward but not making it, and bouncing back into the same place again.

Sherlock Holmes stood watching it, head tilted at just the slightest angle, arms dangling loose at his sides.

John and Mary watched him, waiting. Mary was silent now, stock-still on the Victorian-style sofa they’d bought to match the house, and gripping John’s hand hard enough to hurt. Earlier she’d been animated, talking, saying over and over, “I should be able to do this. I’m trained for this. I can track anyone. Find anyone. This is what I do.”

And John had been saying, “This is what you used to do, your life is different now,” and Mary had said again, “But this is what I _do_ ,” until Sherlock turned on them both with an agitated, “Stop. Talking. _Now_.”

The clock click-click-clicked. Sherlock stared.

And then he took a step closer, reached out, and pulled something from behind the minute hand. He held it out to John and Mary.

“Gum.”

“Gum?” said Mary. 

“Chewing gum.” Sherlock sniffed it. “Grape flavor. We know someone who’s fond of grape flavored bubble gum, don’t we?”

“Don’t you dare tell me this is ‘obvious,’ Sherlock,” said John, Mary’s hand still in his. “Don’t you dare. Where is he? Who took him?”

Sherlock’s eyes scanned the room. He bent to examine a leather chair and then a nearby ottoman, crouching down to the floor, magnifying glass in hand. “Been moved,” he commented. “Bit heavy. Not impossible. Just tall enough, I should think.”

Then he walked, all calm confidence, to the hearth and indicated the paneled wall beside it. “Dust on the molding,” he said with an easy shrug. “Wasn’t disturbed yesterday. And now,” he added, running one hand along a panel, “the secret passageway must give up its secret.”

A moment later the panel was open and a very dusty little boy was being hugged and scolded, all at the same time. “What is wrong with you!” Mary was sobbing. “We thought you were missing. We thought you were kidnapped!”

And John, visibly trying hard to be the sensible, stern father, stepped in to tell him, “You’ve been very naughty. You will go to your room, and you will stay there until we come to get you.”

But Sherlock, peering closely at the little boy’s face, was watching the tears well up at John’s hard tone. He bent down to 5-year-old-level, resting on one knee, and looked at the child solemnly. “Why?” he asked.

The little boy sniffled. Sherlock put out a hand and said, “Tissue.” As always, John responded automatically, putting a Kleenex in his hand. 

Sherlock wiped the boy’s nose and handed the tissue back to John. “There,” he said. “Now, suppose you tell us.”

The little boy looked to his father and mother, then back again. “I was stopping time,” he said.

Sherlock nodded. “Yes, I saw. Very clever. But you only stopped time in that one place. It kept going for John and Mary.”

The little boy looked down at his shoes. They were very dusty.

“Why would you need to stop time?” Sherlock asked him. “No, wait—let me guess. Will you let me guess?”

The boy gave a tiny nod.

“All right. It’s Monday morning. John and Mary put you to bed last night, and you weren’t there when they went to wake you. The clock was stopped at 7am. The school bus comes at 8, doesn’t it?”

Tiny nod.

“Is someone picking on you?”

The little boy shrugged.

“No, that’s not it, is it? Are the teachers mean?”

Another shrug. 

“Bad food at lunch? Nothing to do at recess? Ah,” Sherlock nodded. “I think I’ve got it.” He stood, crossed the room to retrieve his coat, wrapped his scarf around his neck, and reached down for the little boy’s hand. “Back in a bit,” he announced over his shoulder as he led the way out the door.

Mary looked at John. “Did he just leave with our son?”

John was staring after them. “Yeah, he did.”

“Should I be worried?”

And John said, “Probably. But he said they’d be back.”

“I suppose he did.”

They both stood there for another moment, looking at the door. Then John turned to Mary with the first smile of the morning. “Well. Fancy some breakfast?”

She smiled back. “Starving.”

 

They were, indeed, back in a bit. Two hours, in fact, but well before lunchtime. Well before Mary was _actually_ worried, although she’d started to pace a little and mutter darkly about automatic weapons.

Neither one of them spoke to her, they just went into the kitchen together, a tall, gangly man with a bit of grey creeping into his dark hair, and a sturdy little blond-haired boy with dust still on his jeans. They sat at the table, heads together, the stacks of books they’d carried toppling haphazardly, and one middle-sized volume open in front of them. 

“Fairy tales?” Mary asked, setting some celery sticks and peanut butter in front of them, and adding a tall glass of milk for each. John was at the sink, washing up from breakfast.

“Algebra,” said Sherlock, without looking up.

“We’re solving for x,” her son said happily, gripping a yellow pencil, swinging his feet so his shoes bounced off the legs of the chair. 

“I’ll need a graphing calculator,” Sherlock told her, as the pencil scratched along. “And you’ll have to acquire a microscope, I can’t spare the one at Baker Street. A high school level chemistry set ought to do for now, we can order the other things we need online. An OED, not the abridged one. A piano, I think. One violin is enough. And 8 o’clock is absurd for civilized adults. We’ll begin at 10 tomorrow.”

Mary laughed. “Our son will be at school at 10 o’clock tomorrow, Sherlock.”

John turned from the sink, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “You two can play another time,” he agreed. “School comes first.”

“You must be very curious to discover more about this house,” said Sherlock. “Perhaps there’s a sub-basement below the cellar? More secret passages in the walls? Concealed door in the attic? Maybe you _like_ picking chewing gum out of clockworks?”

When John and Mary just looked confused, he let the irritation seep into his voice. “How bored would you have to be,” Sherlock said, “to actually try to stop time so you wouldn’t have to go to school?”

Which is how one little boy ended up being home-schooled by the greatest detective of all time. Sherlock never took any credit for the websites he created, or the curricula that homeschool families across Europe adopted. He had so many aliases even John couldn’t keep them straight. In fact, John was never completely sure whether the Alabama housewife who blogged about calculus was actually Sherlock, or just an ordinary mom with a particular brand of genius and a very sarcastic sense of humor. 

And if their son was also a crack shot with a rifle by the age of 7, well, why not. With no PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, or homeroom treats to prepare, Mary had to have _something_ to do in the evenings, didn’t she?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks (or blame?) to my friend A., who gave me a prompt of grandfather clock, dust, and gum :-)


End file.
